There has been much British LGBT media discussion concerned that we might lose sight of the work of seventies and eighties independent gay film maker Derek Jarman (1942-1994) In his memory, then, I present this brief filmography.

 Derek was born in Middlesex, and attended university at Kings College London, as well as the Slade School of Art at the University College of London in the sixties and seventies.

He first accquired some degree of infamy over Sebastiane (1976), which reinterpreted the Christian martyr Saint Sebastian as a homoerotic tale of a sybaritic gay sun-worshipper, who fell afoul of his lustful centurion. It was heavily criticised for its exubertant homoeroticism and male nudity, but equally praised for its faithful rendition of Latin.

Jubilee (1977) was radically different. This punk fantasia has John Dee, Elizabeth I’s astrologer, sending the monarch forward to the time of her namesake, Elizabeth, who has just died after being mugged while out on a work with her trademark corgis. Elizabeth I is reincarnated as Bod, leader of a group of anarchist punks, whose excursions and reminiscences form the core of this story, concluding in Buckingham Palace, now a vast recording studio. Malcolm MacLaren acts Adam Ant, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Wayne County also appeared.

 After filming Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1979), he spent the next few years trying to get funding for Caravaggio, his next major project, although he did film a homoerotic retelling of several of Shakespeare’s sonnets, The Angelic Conversation, in 1986. Caravaggio (1986) focused on the Baroque Italian artist named, and his models Rannucio and Lena, dealing with the relationship between his intensely religious art and the underworld models that he frequently used. It was celebrated for its painterly close attention to detail.

Deeply pessimistic about the decay of Thatcher’s Britain, he filmed the elegaic Last of England (1987), and then set Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem to film, without spoken dialogue, using the recording of a past performance on the soundtrack. It turned out to be the last performance of Sir Laurence Olivier, who died shortly after filming in July 1989. In 1990, Britain’s Channel 4 assisted Jarman to film The Garden, set in his Dungeness Kent garden, and drawing parallels between the life of a tortured and martyred gay couple and the lives of Christ, the Virgin Mary and Judas.

In 1991, he filmed Edward II, an adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s sixteenth century play about the gay English monarch, and depicts how his love for his male favourites Piers Gaveston and Hugh Despenser cost him his life and throne, under attack from his embittered queen Isabella and her lover Mortimer. Members of OutRage, a British gay direct action group, served as his army.  He returned to the life of a gay biographical subject when he filmed Wittgenstein (1993), about the life of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.

By now, though, Jarman was dying as he reached the final stages of his illness. Blue (1994) consisted of a single framed shot of that colour, with spoken dialogue from the film maker and some of his past collaborators. Why “blue”? It’s Polari for “gay”.

Fourteen years after he passed away, his work is still watched and remembered with pride and awe at his outspoken work and his courage.

Recommended:

 William Pencak: The Films of Derek Jarman: Jefferson: MacFarland and Company: 2002.